This invention relates to a food service system for serving meals that include hot or warm foods, and in particular to a dish and tray combination for use in such a system.
Institutional meals, such as those served in hospitals, are often prepared in advance, quick-chilled or frozen, and held in storage for rethermalization or reheating when needed. This method offers several advantages. Advanced food preparation smooths out the work load for the food preparers. Furthermore, since meal production can be independent of when the meals are served, several meals can be prepared at once, streamlining the process and condensing production time so that labor costs are lower and productivity is higher. Advanced preparation also eliminates "left over" meals, thereby reducing waste. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, studies have shown that advanced preparation produces meals that are better tasting, more appealing, and more nutritious than meals that are cooked and held at serving temperature for extended periods. With advanced preparation, food is heated just before serving to assure hot, fresh, attractive meals. Advanced preparation also ensures uniform meal quality.
In an advance preparation system the entire meal, including foods that are served warm and cold, is assembled on a tray. The foods that are to be served warm are put on special dishes having heating elements and electrical contacts. These special dishes are registered in special locations on the tray. The trays are then loaded into a specially constructed cart, and the cart is stored in a refrigeration unit until mealtime. At mealtime, the food on the special dishes can be thermalized or heated by connecting the electrical contacts to an electric power supply. The carts are specially constructed to conduct electrical energy to the special dishes to heat the food. Little heat is lost from the special dishes to the surrounding food on the trays, so the cold food remains cold. When the proper serving temperature is reached, the meal is ready to be served. An example of an excellent advance preparation meal service system is shown in co-assigned Shevlin, U.S. Pat. No. 3,736,981, incorporated herein by reference.
A draw-back of the advance preparation food systems heretofore used is that they employ rectangular or other unusually shaped dishes, that fit into corresponding wells in the tray. The rectangular shape of the dishes and the wells was necessary to properly register the dish in the well so that the electrical contacts on the dish would be properly aligned with the power supply contacts in the carts. However, the rectangular shapes are unaesthetic. Moreover, these unfamiliar shapes emphasize the institutional nature of the surroundings and may even diminish the perceived quality of the meal.